March 01, 2016 (Gatineau, QC) – The Ski Tour Canada began this morning with a 1.7k skate sprint qualifier in Gatineau, Quebec with the Canadian Parliament buildings looming in the background. Cold, fast conditions made for some fast times around the relatively flat course.

The USA’s Jessie Diggins and Simi Hamilton impressed with 2^nd place results in the women’s and men’s races respectively as Norwegian Petter Northug led the men through in 3min 12s while Hanna Falk of Sweden posted the fastest woman’s time in 3min 32s.

Motivated by the home crowd, three Canadians made it into the top 30 and through to the heats. Alex Harvey led the way with a solid 15^th place in 3min 17sec, 4 seconds off the pace set by Norwegian sprint legend Petter Northug. He will be joined in the heats by Knute Johnsgaard who qualified 29th in his second world cup ever and Maya Macisaac Jones who raced to 30^th place, her first ever time in the points.

Johnsgaard was particularly happy to have made the heats “This has been my main focus all year long, this will be my first time in the world cup heats and I’m just going to try and hang on as long as possible”

The Americans clearly came to play as Sadie Bjornsen, Ida Sargent and Sophie Caldwell all qualified on the women’s while Erik Bjornsen advanced placing 27^th on the men’s side. This will be Erik Bjornsen’s first time racing in the heats on the World Cup as he’s known as more of a distance classic skier. Today’s result came as somewhat of a surprise to him as well, “I couldn’t really tell how it went, given it was a sprint qualifier, sounds like my result was pretty good though.”

Bjornsen like many others, including fellow American Dakota Blackhorse Von Jess, Canadian Annika Hicks, and Britain’s Andrew Musgrave were quick to comment how amazing it is racing in Canada and how incredible the atmosphere was out there today.

Results

Women’s qualifications here.
Men’s qualifications here.